


Indelible Valor

by ellebb



Category: Queen's Crown (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, gift-giving except not, i dont know anything abt horses beyond skimmed google searches, lol forgive me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 16:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12561976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: “I wish to give you something,” she said.He raised a brow, and knew his expression pulled in because he could feel it in his chest.She continued, heedless. “I hesitate to call it a gift, though.  Because it requires a price of you.”





	Indelible Valor

**Author's Note:**

> On [Tumblr](https://ellebeebee.tumblr.com/post/166944219085/indelible-valor).

Behind them the palace sat high, and before them cold fog obscured the path wound down and around the hill.  Like a salt-heavy ocean in furious flux, the air shivered inscrutable before them, squeezing and stifling their world.  Still, his companion seemed to know her way, and her loyal guards were silent. **  
**

That pricked him, to be sure.  The two men riding behind, their small movements and the quiet of their oiled armor, not to mention their belonging to a previously enemy nation-- their presence rankled Noah on an instinctual level. But they were enemies no longer.  He would never turn down a friendly sword at his back, and, of course--

“Propriety” had to be followed.

The way they treated women here had a clear point of origin: their fixation on bloodline and the purity thereof-- or at least the appearance of purity.  Any perceived dishonor endangered their nobles’ power, both political and economical, and invited “outsiders” into the inner circle of the elite.  A most grievous state of affairs by Sinado standards.

He still puzzled over the incident with the former queen.

He glanced over.  Black hair pinned up simply behind the pale shells of her ears, she wore a modest riding habit.  They all dressed like that here.  Their sleeves covered their arms and their skirts swept the ground.  She in particular, though, seemed disinterested in finery or jewels or even colors.  If not for the requirements of her position, he felt sure she would deposit herself completely of all things superfluous.

Some years ago, they had been on the road in winter and came across a lake. A thin coating of ice gilded its surface, so perfect and crystalline that it did not obscure at all the dark, deep, and frigid waters.  The lake resembled a great expanse of night brought low to the earth.

Sometimes she reminded him of that lake.  Her serene face so immutable and still, her dark eyes glacial.  But should you take one wrong step, her surface would crack and drag you down into an inescapable undertow.

To think, if he was one to trust first appearances, he would have taken her as dull.

This morning though, the slightly deeper set of her mouth read as particularly pensive.  She turned to him.

“I wish to give you something,” she said.

She did not mince words.  Yes, she could weave a wickedly witty line, dry as the steppe in summer, but when she meant it she did not embellish.

He raised a brow, and knew his expression pulled in because he could feel it in his chest.

She continued, heedless. “I hesitate to call it a gift, though.  Because it requires a price of you.”

She stilled her horse and turned slightly in her saddle to look at him.  How many times had he faced that serious look she’d given him and turned it into a flush and a small twitch of a smile with a bit of teasing?  But he couldn’t summon the habit.  Not now, when he could feel the chill seeping up from mirror-thin ice.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s a price that you aren’t obligated to pay.  I leave the choice to you.”

He frowned, and for once found himself struggling for words. “You know that in Tawar…”

“I know.  You told me.  But this isn’t quite a gift.”

“And is this a custom of Sinado?  To court with not-quite-a-gift?”

“No,” she said, cutting down his attempt at a smirk. “Perhaps this hasn’t anything to do with Tawar or Sinado.  Perhaps this has everything to do with who _I_  am, as an individual person.  And  _my_ personal intentions.”

The fog pressed around them, amplifying their small sounds: the calm whuffing of the horses, the creak of leather as the younger guard shifted in his saddle some paces away, her small exhalation into the icy morning air.  She glanced away.

“I know it is a strange concept to you,” she said. “But I have so rarely felt the compulsion for personal agenda.  Duty, above all.  That’s what we grew up with. Not until… I have not felt the need to have something of my own-- truly of my own-- until you.”

He was grateful for his own physical dexterity.  He was grateful for the docile responsiveness of his borrowed steed.  It made an effortless, natural thing of his sidle close, and his reach across to her.  His fingers cradled her hand like a fresh-cut flower, as if its petals should bruise if handled with anything but the softest touch.  His own ears thumping in the silent air, he brushed against the underside of her wrist.  Her pulse ran hot.

After all, she only  _appeared_ like an icy lake.

The older guard cleared his throat loudly.  She pulled her hand away, turning her heated face away.

He smiled. “Show me.”

Her boots nudged her gentle gelding forward as they followed.  The worn-smooth path descended down the hill, and forked off into slightly lumpy foothills. Sparse groupings of silver aspens and little golden maples fell in beside them. The smell of manure and the bays of livestock were the only things to alert him to their destination.

They passed several pens with unseen or skittish habitants absent from their view, and at the end of an overgrown path she stopped them by a large paddock. The chipped and dark wood fence rolled far into the distance, its boundaries obscured by mist.  She dismounted, so he did as well.  The guards remained several paces away.

The woolen pleats of her split skirt gathered the dew from grass gone slightly wild and long.  The trail of a single horseman, just an hour or two old, was the only clue that any human ever tread this far from the palace main.  She stepped up on the lower fence rung and gazed out into the empty pen.

Noah joined her, but he just propped his arms up and still his eyes grazed over the top of her head.

She was silent, so he said nothing.  He listened to the wind lapping at the brittle trees.  The heavy sway of the thick heath swept up across his boots and out over gentle knolls.

He heard it before he saw it.  One too many breaths huffing warmly, and the soft fall of heavy feet in an unusual rhythm.  Asymmetrical and deeper on one beat. The white fog condensed in a single point.  That white density hardened, moving with its uneven padding from the depths of the paddock.

It was a horse.  As the fog stripped away, he saw its yellowed hide did not actually refract like condensation.  It stopped, still quite far, and considered them.  He saw now it had a strange device on a hind leg, connecting it from the hock to the ground.  Bracken tangled in its mane, and he thought its tail looked somewhat ragged.

Its head lowered slowly and fog misted from its nostrils.

She turned to him.  “This is Indelible Valor.”

Her voice held a low, soft note. “He’s nearly two score old.  We hold our lineages very dear here, as you’ve found.  He’s the product of centuries of careful breeding by the royal family.”

She paused. “He was the last horse my father owned.”

His eyes broke from the slow sway of the horse’s great head.  She still stared over the drifting wisps over the grass.

“He’s a warhorse.  Knows how to toss a rider from their own horse, and whirl to crush their skull.  But it’s been many years since he’s done that.  He was already retired and put to stud before my father died.  But once Father was gone…” She shook her head. “He mourned.  He was never docile, but since then he’s bit and kicked so many stablehands.  There’s only one left that can approach him.  My mother and I can sometimes.  Roy had the best relationship with Valor.”

She stumbled a bit on the words.  And even with the guards at their back, Noah reached out to run a thumb over her knuckles.

“Roy’s horse, Dauntless, is Valor’s grandson.  My own Chi-Chi-- um, Chivalry-- came from him.  Anyway--”

She cleared her throat.  She stepped down from the fence rung and moved closer.  He gazed down at her, struck by her clean scent.

“Noah, my family has trusted this horse’s ancestors and offspring with their lives.  We’re like two families interwoven.  He doesn’t look like much now, but this horse saved my father’s life more times than he could count.  I’d like to give you the chance to know him.”

He gazed back at her. “So this is not so much a gift, as-- a test.”

“No-- well, not in the sense of the old fables.  ‘If you are pure of heart’ and all that.  It is more…”

She stopped.  If she were a woman from Tawar she would grunt in frustration or curse.  As it was, she looked to the side with a small knit in her brow.  His fingers found a strangling lock by her cheek and swept it back behind her ear.  She returned to him.

“Perhaps,” she said. “This moment here is the important part.  My telling you this.  What comes after is up to you, but ultimately this was what I wanted most.”

Her hand reached to his, his fingers lightly feathering her hair, and she pressed his palm more firmly against her cheek.  His chest lept with the rare contact, as small as it seemed, and with the tangles of their mingled gazes.

He grinned. “What would your people say,  _skirla_ , to know of such blatant selfishness expressed by their noble queen?  Shocking.”

“Surely not so shocking if we consider the more flagrant of the world’s rulers,” she smiled. “Why, if I am to be queen, proper abuse of power and classical greed are time-honored skills I must cultivate.”

He laughed.

She dropped his hand and stepped away.

“I must go.  Follow if you will, or don’t.  But I am expected elsewhere.”

She remounted her gelding with an elegant swing of her legs.  It struck him that, in billowing split skirts, that was the most he’d seen of them.  Yet.

“Wait,” he called.

Halfway back to her guards she turned in the saddle.

“How did he lose the leg?”

She raised a brow. “It wasn’t a battle wound.  It was his last cover.  The mare kicked him and quite put an end to his stud days.”

Her heels set her horse back along the path, and the guards circled to follow. Noah would laugh at her words except they were a touch too dark for even being darkly comic.

He went back to the fence.  Valor still watched him, yellow and ragged and shifting on his hooves.  The false leg pawed at the grass.  It struck him that perhaps she had been lying.  The thought thrilled him, that he could not be certain and she left him with a puzzle of mental sparring.

If she had been lying, then-- not a test, indeed.

He considered Valor.  Valor considered him.

-

The first time he climbed the fence, he immediately had to vault back to safety as a great weight of barrelling beast rammed the fence a few hand spans from where he’d been.

Noah laughed, let the horse see him laugh.  His blood raced.

“Good,” he said loudly. “Try what you will, you old pony.  But you will find me entirely different than these soft Sinado creatures.”

Valor huffed with a vile eye rolling at him.  He hobbled away into the mist without sparing a second glance.

Noah strolled around the paddock’s perimeter and found it generous in size with a small barn for what little currying the absent stablehand could manage. A broad creek ran through the enclosure, and a dense copse provided a lair for whatever machinations the beast was brewing.

He lingered for several hours until warm sunlight dappled by the surrounding foliage cut away the fog.  He watched the strange shape of the horse lurking in the copse, catching glimpses now and then.

He finally left near noon with his thoughts turning.

-

For a week, he spent his mornings at the paddock among the silvery trees.  His companions turned curious, but he shrugged it off.  She hadn’t said anything about keeping it secret, but something about the silent mists and the yellow-white apparition limping through the dark morning shadows made him want to keep it to himself.  How had she phrased it?  Something truly of their own.

He brought treats.  Valor ran him out of his territory.  Sometimes the old horse would let him tread a few steps through the grass on the other side, even disappear for a long stretch.  But then the rumbling of those uneven hooves and Noah had to bolt to avoid getting smashed into the dirt.

He started to notice things.  Old scars along that patchy hide, marks from swords and pikes and daggers.  An uneven set in his long face like a broken nose.  He could imagine the wet crunching thump from another horse’s hoof.  A constellation of nicks and indents.  Tough knots of ropey tissue.  His weight, and his broad shoulders and flanks, made him a terrifying battering ram.

This was no horse.  It was a warrior.

How many old men and women had he known so like this creature back home? How many, in fact, of those same people had faced this very creature on some old bloody field?

He could not summon any enmity though.  Not when he leaned against the fence and watched that noble form sway with cunning majesty and gleaming eyes attended as closely to his hands and feet as any sparring partner.

He admonished himself of the idea of owning Valor; how could such a spirit ever be owned?

-

She rode up the path and stopped her horse where he had tied his.  Dewdrops caught on the embroidery of her riding habit as she came to where he sat on the top fence rung.  A heavy basket sat on his knee.

She leaned near him. “So?  You’ve made progress in all this time?”

Noah held a finger to his lips.  He pulled an apple from the basket, splotched with pink and yellow and red.  He tossed it out into the field where it landed with an audible thump.

They waited.  The scent of damp and mud, and the seep of chill pressed on them.

Indelible Valor finally appeared, like a ghost.  He lowered his great wedge of a head and watched them.

Leisurely, as if doing them a great favor, Valor rolled forward on his truculent uneven stride.  His nose swept the ground and his white breath wafted over the grass.  He found the apple, and chewed on it.  

Noah smiled at her.  She smiled back.

“So you  _are_ pure of heart,” she said.

He laughed. “Ah.  I was afraid, actually, that it wouldn’t be enough.”

She climbed up to sit on the fence as well.  She took an apple as well. “No. This is about all even I can manage a lot of days.”

She tossed the apple near Valor, already bucking his head and snorting.  She picked another one from the basket and handed it to him.  Noah accepted it.  His smile lingering, soft, he let his fingers deliberately feather over hers.

“Thank you,” he said.

She hesitated.  But her dark eyes communicated that warm night sky brought low, and her fingers let go to run over his knuckles, over his hot pulse.

“I’m glad,” she said.


End file.
